Chapter 8
Morning light made the hallway look ordinary again, which felt wrong.
I stood in LOCATION_X in daylight with my coffee going cold in my hand. The wood floor showed every scuff I'd never noticed at 2:26 AM. The warm ceiling flush-mount was off now, unnecessary against the sun coming off the front door. The coat hooks on the left wall held Daniel's work jacket and the girls' backpacks. The framed photo collage on the right wall showed Emma and Sophie in pink, smiling in full daylight, nothing like the half-lit image that had stared back at me hours earlier.
I looked up at the chain latch. In the night it had hung vertical and loose. Now, in the sun, I could see why.
The top plate was pulled away from the door frame by an eighth of an inch. Two screws sat at a slight angle, their heads stripped to shiny circles. The track that the slide was supposed to lock into was misaligned. When I pushed the chain up with my finger, it slid into place with a cheap click. When I bumped the door lightly with my hip, it rattled and dropped vertical again.
It had never really been engaged. We'd been sliding it closed every night thinking we were safe, and all it took was a bump or a pull to undo it.
"You see it?" I said out loud, though no one was there.
Sophie padded out from the kitchen in her socks, holding her cereal bowl with both hands. Emma followed behind her, quiet.
"Is that broken?" Emma asked.
I nodded. "I think it's been broken for a while. The screws are stripped."
Emma stared at it. She didn't look scared now. She looked embarrassed, the way she did when she'd been caught not knowing something she thought she knew.
"I thought it was locked," she whispered. "I slid it before bed."
"I know you did, honey. It wasn't your fault. It wouldn't hold."
I reached for the smart lock. The blue backlit display was dim in the daylight. It still read DOOR OPENED FROM INSIDE 2:29 AM in the history when I tapped through. The contradiction from last night was now just data.
I crouched down so I was level with Emma. "Em, can you show me how you unlocked the door last night?"
She hesitated and looked at the brushed nickel lever, then at the keypad.
"I just pushed the numbers," she said. "The ones you push."
"Which numbers?"
She stepped closer and tapped quickly: 1-2-3-4. The lock beeped, cheerful and immediate, and the display flashed UNLOCKED BY CODE.
My stomach dropped. 1-2-3-4. Daniel had set it when we moved in three years ago and we'd never changed it. I'd told myself we'd do it later. Later had become never.
"You watched me do it?" I asked.
She nodded, her eyes filling. "You don't cover it. I saw."
Sophie, still holding her bowl, said, "I know it too."
Of course they did. Two kids standing in the hallway every day while I punched in the easiest code in America.
The front door opened then and Daniel came in from his night shift, his hospital scrubs smelling faintly of antiseptic and coffee. His face was tired, his hair flat on one side from the break room couch. He took one look at me crouched by the lock and the hanging chain and stopped.
"You didn't sleep," he said.
"I couldn't," I said.
He set his bag down by the shoe rack and came closer. I walked him through the timeline the way I'd rehearsed it — 2:26 AM unlock by Emma's code, 2:26 AM unlocked from inside, 2:29 AM door opened, chain hanging loose, small figure in pink that was Lily's jacket from the playdate, not Lily herself. I showed him the log. I showed him the chain and bumped the door so he could watch it fall.
He reached up and wiggled the plate. The whole thing shifted under his fingers. The screws spun without catching.
"Jesus," he said quietly. "Those are half-inch screws. They didn't even hit the stud. This is just drywall."
Guilt hit him all at once. I could see it in his shoulders.
"Maya, I said I'd change that code last year," he said. "You asked me to. I kept saying the default was fine because who'd guess we were 1234. That's on me."
"It's on both of us," I said. "I used it in front of them. I never thought they'd memorize it."
Emma was crying now, silently. Daniel knelt and pulled her in, scrubs and all.
"Hey, no. You're not in trouble for the code. That's grown-up stuff we messed up," he said. "But you get why we don't open the door at night, right? Even if you think someone's outside?"
She nodded against his shoulder.
He looked up at me over her head. "We fix this today. Today."
I nodded and pulled out my phone. I called Ace Hardware on Main, the one by the gas station, and asked for three-inch wood screws for the chain plate and a strike plate reinforcement kit. The guy said he had both and to bring the old screws to match the head. While Daniel held the chain plate steady so it wouldn't rattle, I took a photo of the lock model number to look up how to change the code. My hands were still a little shaky, but it was daylight work now. Measurable work.
"We'll reset the code together," I told Emma and Sophie. "And only Mom and Dad will know it. And Dad and I will fix this chain so it actually holds."
May you like
Daniel tightened his jaw and stared at the loose plate. "Should've done it months ago," he said again, more to himself than to us.
The hallway felt less like a stage set and more like a house I could repair.
